The Valley of Fear
by Charlemaine
Summary: The time has come to face the darkness. Innocence is nothing more than a thin veil separating one young man from his fear of eternal damnation. And ye shall walk through the valley of shadows....
1. Author's Note: read before you begin

**Author's Note...**

due to the failings of the formatting from her computer

Dear all-important reader:

It appears that asterisks, dividers and double spacing between paragraphs refuse to turn up after I upload my documents onto FF net. Therefore I would like to say that there is supposed to be a double-space/wingding dividers/whatsitsname just before part with the preacher (don't worry, this is not a spoiler). This particular part happens some years after the main incident of this story.

I had to notify you of this because readers of my past stories have occasionally complained of the lack of these little amenities that make reading so much more pleasurable. My apologies.

Yours forever,

Charlemaine


	2. Chapter 1

//Author's Note:

This little vignette was written to – or at least, began with – Evanescence's raging 'Weight of the World'. While the song itself ended in a couple of minutes, my imagination would not. And no, the lyrics (probably) have not much to do with the contents of this story. My Muse works in strange ways.

**The Valley of Fear**

The light of the world sealed itself off above him.

His slender pale arms did nothing to slow the descent into the dark weightless pit; already the tendrils of scaly demon arms wrapped themselves around his torso and raped him in every crevice.

He should never have dreamed of hell. Should never have believed.

"If you love me then be a good boy. For the love of God, spare me from the thought of my son in the Devil's grasp!" his rail-thin silver-haired mother had wailed. She looked like a harridan of some brutal Nordic myth. A hysterical raging presence that frightened the living daylights out of him – literally now, he supposed. She believed her widowhood to be retribution for being too needy of the fleshly pleasures her late husband gave generously. Whenever he, her little boy, gave any sign of growing up into a man, she would fly into a subtle temper and set him upon some back-breaking chores that would hopefully cure him of original sin. Let him be pure forever. Let not the threat of nature's process devour the saintly child. And so in his late teens he was a young boy still, preserved in a jar of naïveté.

All to ruin now, her efforts. The descent was speeding up. There was a certain point of ecstasy in his brain that threatened to implode if he did not stop falling soon. He wanted an end. Any sort of end –

He was going to regret those words.

Time screeched to a standstill: now there was nothingness.

A waif of a girl materialised before him. She kissed him. A cool, silvery, inexpressibly sad teardrop on his cheek. Then she waved goodbye. Another girl, no, a woman appeared next. The deceptively feminine arm suddenly rose to reveal a wicked white sword. The blade came slicing into the deepest essence of his soul. He screamed.

_I should never have believed…_

He opened his eyes. Saw a blurry suggestion of an angel.

As his vision focused, His Majesty the Prince of Darkness drew back and appeared to revel in his reflection in the mortal's eyes: a sleekly muscled marble god with a proud, erect cock preceded by silken curls up to the navel; broad but not hulking shoulders draped abundantly with an impossibly lustrous mane – curling, alive, the colour of midnight. The eyes gleamed topaz and indigo and prismatic by turns.

The boy shivered. "This is all a nightmare."

"Indeed But did you enjoy my daughters?" A velvet voice that rumbled with eternity.

"Daughters?"

"Yes – Despair and Destruction. The second can be a real bitch, although in life mortals much prefer to encounter her than Despair. Despair pushes the suicidal off rooftops and makes drives many a lonely soul mad." The Prince cocked his head. "But you are here because of neither."

"I think… it was fear that led me to you." A faint shrill echo of his mother passed through his memory.

"Ah. Innocence is so easily fooled by fear. Innocence has not done you any favours, has it?" He grasped the boy's hand. "Do tell: what tales of my domain has the harpy regaled you with?" He leaned forward subtly like a gleeful executioner waiting for the prisoner's last words, shortly after which he would lop off the unfortunate head.

"The usual, I guess. A fiery flaming pit…a realm of eternal torture – and you…"

"Yes. What about me?" The iron grip on the boy's wrist mocked the trembling latter. To soften the gesture, he smiled. "Don't be afraid. There's not much else I can do that you haven't already done for yourself."

"Why…what do you mean by that?"

"Fear lives in your head. Fear of meeting me at the end. You want to be immortal not to escape uncertainty, but to escape _certainty_. The sure destiny of being roasted alive by my minions when your flame of life winks out – not, mind you, that I have any. Minions, that is."

"None at all?"

"Heck, no. It's lonely down here. And it is not really down, either. That is a metaphor – after all, a 'pit' can hardly be _up_, can it, any more than a well?" Another smile, lovely, full of movie-star ivory teeth. Not even a single fang.

"So you have brought me here to be your companion?"

An uproarious laugh. "No! You have brought yourself here, boy. You want to see and touch me with your own eyes and hands, because the simplest way to conquer fear is to face it." The smile deepened. "But you knew that."

"Stop. Stop smiling…like that."

"But why? Would you rather I be all…doom and judgment?"

The eighteen-year-old flushed. He did not say it – after all, the Prince read the minds of all doomed souls, so there was no need to bother – but the almost tranquil smile starkly resembled that of Gabriel at the Annunciation. He could even see Mary's demure bowed head, her exaggeratedly delicate hands, radiant in the glow of the Archangel's halo and flowing robes. Gabriel, red-haired, handsome and good and pure. And the Prince before him now, hands actually clasped in prayer to imitate with eerie exactness the act of prayer!

"Do you love me?" he asked in a mocking melodious voice.

"What?"

"I said DO YOU LOVE ME!" Ablaze with fury suddenly, the Prince grabbed him hard enough to crush every bone in his body (except he was already dead) and slammed him against an invisible wall. "Do you think I did not mourn my greatest and noblest adversary when he died! I stood beside Judas and wept as he bled on the cross!"

"I – "

"Cease your feeble excuses! I will break down the walls of ignorance and fear you have been taught to construct. Foolish child!"

"Please – my Prince – no!"

A stinging slap that was more like a whiplash from a cat-o'-nine-tails. A sharp, unfamiliar sensation pierced his body. The boy looked down to see the huge cock buried inside him.

"Oh, God, no." He moaned.

"God has heard your piece. And He sends His love." Whispering as he thrust mercilessly, again, again, again. His nails dug into pliant skin and tore long rake-wounds that healed as soon as they opened. "I too love you. But you reject me with ignorant dread." Their hips rocked rhythmically in a slow pounding dance. Everything slowed to an agonising slow-motion.

"I know." The boy closed his eyes, tears streaming down his face. "Save me. I beg you, save me." His cries were stopped as the Prince pushed his hot tongue into the damp cave of his mouth, exploring, forcing his own tongue to respond by cavorting with the intruder. Hard bruising kisses, passionately abusive, followed before his captor freed his mouth.

"Do you really wish me to stop?"

"Stop? No…I…I…"

"Yes, love?"

"I wish…you would…go on forever."

"You don't know what you ask…"

"Yes, I do! Save me from my innocence."

"Little mortal, you mean this?"

"I want to know. I don't want to be afraid. If I have to return to you at the end, I don't want to be afraid."

The angst and anger abated, and once again the divine smile. "Then be free, my child."

The boy felt the strong hot arms release him into a wide faintly glowing void, and landed amidst what felt like a mass of writhing bodies. Gasping, he saw naked limbs caress his thighs and face, saw lurid swollen members and open hungry blossoms of flesh. Already he was becoming part of them, this seamless tapestry of stripped humanity. And he remembered where he had last saw this – on a ceiling fresco in a famous chapel. The tormented, the strayed sheep, the damned, coiling in orgasmic anguish and watched over by the flaming swords of Archangels. And he was now a part of that glorious art! Black and white and olive-skinned and every shade in between; whole nations lay here and made love to each other. After centuries of warring, this was what happened between enemies? How sweet and fitting a retribution. Not really a punishment at all.

He saw hands of various colours obscuring every spare inch of flesh on his body and recognised them to be the demons of his imagining. No demons here, only people damned to spend an eternity fornicating until, perhaps, they got sick of it.

Just before he drowned in the orgy, before his cock entered a female body and another man's cock entered his mouth, he saw above the shining face of their reigning Prince. Radiant and heartbreakingly beautiful, Lucifer, the Morning Star once more.

_May your light forever shine upon us!_

The people in the pews listened raptly as the young preacher, a slender, sturdy man with a clear voice that reached to the back of the church, forgot the Bible in front of him and spoke as if guided by the angels themselves.

"And to those who fear the temptation of the Devil, I say: Cast aside your fears! Be free of sin and the very thought of sin. The Lord Jesus Christ died for us so we could be absolved from our own darkness! I know of what I speak, believe me, for I once walked in the valley of shadow. Until the Fallen One came to me, and I was forced to confront my own ignorance and terror in the fire of his grip. The lesson is clear: the more we love and embrace our fellow man in this life, the less we will pay our penance in that endless orgy of Hell. I should know…I paid that penance…."


End file.
